Informed gun owners know that the mainstream media is biased and unreliable when it comes to firearm-related topics. Yet recent data from polling firm Gallup show skepticism about mass media is broadly distributed among the U.S. population. One anti-gun “journalism” project helps explain why, by demonstrating how activism and reporting have effectively merged, to the detriment of the profession’s integrity.
First, the bad news for “the news.” Gallup has been asking Americans about their “trust and confidence” in mass media—newspapers, TV and radio—to report the news “fully, accurately and fairly” since 1972. A Gallup poll conducted between Sept. 2-16 shows trust and confidence in mass media at 28%, the lowest level in the poll’s 53-year history.
While trust is at record lows among all parties, Democrats (51%) report confidence at higher rates than Republicans (8%) and Independents (27%). Sixty-two percent of Republicans expressed NO confidence or trust in mass media “at all!”
Examples abound of how the modern media has botched the biggest stories of the day, including the political viability of Donald Trump and Joe Biden’s fitness for the presidency.
But The Trace demonstrates how it is not mere ignorance or unprofessionalism that lead to unreliable news. It is the agenda that drives the reporting.
Michael Bloomberg is one of the richest men in the world and one of the most-zealous advocates for gun control in the United States.
Bloomberg, as mayor of New York City, created Mayors Against Illegal Guns to spread anti-gun orthodoxy in municipal politics. That organization spawned Everytown for Gun Safety, a firearm-prohibition lobby that promotes gun-control advocacy in professional and cultural spheres and even among mothers. The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health also hosts the Center for Gun Violence Solutions, which gives the cause a façade of scientific credibility. The overall goal is to create the impression of an elite anti-gun consensus.
What brings the work of all these components to the public’s attention is the operation’s media arm. Bloomberg News was created in 1990. But in 2015, Bloomberg went even further and launched The Trace, which bills itself as a “team of journalists exclusively dedicated to reporting on our country’s gun violence crisis.”
The Trace doesn’t just have a beat; it has an objective: to tilt the narrative about crime and public safety toward support for gun control.
One way is by “partnering” with other media outlets to place stories in well-known newspapers, magazines and television stations.
Another is by mentoring reporters to create their own anti-gun content. Jennifer Mascia, a founding staffer of The Trace, also helped found the Association of Gun Violence Reporters (AGVR). Among other things, AGVR publishes a detailed guide for journalists on how to report on “gun violence.” Key to their approach is insisting every firearm-related fatality was preventable and points to a “solution.” And this always involves more gun control, including “evidence-based policies like permit to purchase, universal background checks, and waiting periods[.]”
Reporters, according to the guide, are also supposed to frame firearm-related crime as “structural,” as opposed to the result of morally culpable individual decision-making. Thus, they should “[n]ever report in a way that suggests a victim ‘deserved’ to be shot because of what they were engaged in prior to the shooting,” including, apparently, criminals shot in self-defense.
On the other hand, writers should emphasize America is a “country with failing firearm policies” and a “society in which outcomes are shaped by structural racism, concentrated poverty, lack of access to social supports, and other environmental factors.”
AGVR also tells reporters to “[s]eek out the expertise of people beyond the police,” and offers to “connect journalists” to “resources,” including “experts” tutored under Everytown’s umbrella.
The idea that “journalists” need a pre-ordained framing for stories about firearm-related crime and pre-ordained gun-control policies as inevitable takeaways should speak for itself. That is advocacy and exploitation, not “trauma-informed journalism.”
Last August, however, another writer from The Trace, Mike Spies, got too comfortable during an MSNBC appearance and gave away the game. Dismissing lesser forms of gun control, he said: “You have to be honest and say what will actually work, which is what nobody wants to hear, which is that there are just simply way too many firearms, and they are way too accessible.” His solution was to follow the lead of Australia and other countries that had banned and confiscated handguns and other “powerful” firearms.
In presenting this case study, I can’t blame The Trace for singlehandedly destroying America’s faith in journalism.
It is interesting to note, however, that during the 10 years The Trace has been in business, Gallup shows trust in media has declined from 40% to 28%. I’ll let you decide if that’s just a coincidence.
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